With all the recent Kindle news, I thought it might be interesting to look back at the very first Kindle and the eBook climate at that point in time
Tag Archives: Kindle
Oberon Design to allow pre-orders for new Kindle Covers
One of my Oberon Design Kindle covers
If you are as much of a fan of Oberon Design’s exquisite Kindle covers as I am, then I have big news for you. For the first time, Oberon Design will allow pre-orders for their new Kindle (K4) covers. Over the next few weeks, the site will add a pre-order page for the product. As yet, there has been no announcement regarding what designs and colors will be available.
You can also follow Oberon on both Twitter and Facebook for more information.
Amazon’s new tablet revealed
The internet has been buzzing with speculation about whether or not Amazon’s press conference this Wednesday will anounce the long-awaited Amazon tablet. Acccording to Techcrunch, that’s exactly what will be announced. And the name of the device? The Kindle Fire. Check out the article here.
Looking for a eReader deal?
I seem to get quite a few visitors looking for bargains on eReaders, so I thought I would pass these on.
Woot.com frequently has eReaders on sale. Like many of their items, these are refurbished, but the prices are quite reasonable. Today (May 23rd, 2011) there are several deals, probably because Barnes and Noble is scheduled to make a big announcement tomorrow that most experts are guessing will be about a new, improved eReader. Here are today’s deals:
Refurbished second generation Kindle – With 3G for only $89.99 plus $5 shipping
Refurbished Nook at deals.woot.com from dailysteals.com – Original Nook 3G and Wi-fi for only $85.00 plus $5 shipping
You can also find bargain eReaders on eBay. Today’s dailydeal is a brand new Nook Wi-fi for $99.00 with free shipping. Barnes & Noble also sells books, Nooks, the Nook color and various accessories for the Nook in their eBay store.
This blog entry composed while listening to Best of Leadbelly
New Kindle Ad Talks About Real Books
Amazon’s latest Kindle ad is addressing those who like “real books.” It’s a humorous look at some of the most frequently heard objections to the Kindle specifically and eReaders in general.
Reactions to Amazon Lending Announcement
Wednesday’s announcement by Amazon that they will finally allow library lending for the Kindle has caused quite a stir on many of the various ereader discussion boards.
Reactions to the news was both mixed and interesting. Here’s a sampling from some of the forums:
The shock and disbelief crowd: “………..runs off to check the thermometer in HELL!!!!!!”
The cynical crowd: “Welcome to the 21st century, Amazon!”
“Great in 20 years when my library finally gets ebooks I will be all set. I wonder if my kindle will last that long….”
“Good. Now maybe those folks will stop complaining about it.”
“You need to sticky post this over in the Q & A forum as well where the “Why can’t I get library books while every other eReader can?!?!” complaint gets posted just about daily.”
The grateful crowd: “I am SUPER excited… THANK YOU AMAZON for listening your consumers!”
“Inability to check out library books is the ONLY thing I dislike about my Kindle.”
“This is awesome news! Guess I will finally have to get a library card again.”
“Now my kindle will be perfect!”
“The now I’ll buy a Kindle” crowd: Now I will buy a Kindle.”
“I’ve been waiting for Amazon to do this before I’d buy a kindle. Guess I’ll probably be getting one now!”
The too late crowd: “Oh, finally!!! If only I had known two months ago before I bought a Nook so I could borrow library books!”
The “I was going to buy a ____ so I could read library books” crowd: Fill in the blank with Nook, Sony, Kobo, etc.
The wanting more and can’t make ’em happy crowds:
“Now if there was only a color version of the Kindle…”
“This is terrific!! Thank you so much 🙂 Please let there be text-to-speech on the library books too, please!”
“Great news. Hopefully the ability to lend your own books to friends more than once will follow.”
“Unfortunately this won’t help the fact that my library has a really poor collection of ebooks and that many major publishers won’t release their ebooks for libraries or severely limit them. But it is definitely a step forward.”
The altruistic crowd:
“Fantastic! Hey Mr. Bezos, one more idea from your customers: when I buy a book from you, after I’m done reading it can you work with Overdrive to figure out a way I can relinquish the e-book and donate it to a library of my choice? Library budgets are tight, and that would be a great way for you, and your customers, to help libraries keep up with technology.”
Concerned for other readers and the libraries crowd:
“Definitely not good news for the other readers – their one big advantage was library books.”
“I do hope it won’t add too much to library expenses. And it will take awhile before many libraries offer this. As it its my local library is not set up for lending to e-readers (I do know about other lending libraries). But I foresee Kindle getting the lion share of business (in the USA) once it happens. I know more people with Kindles than other e-readers.”
Librarians’ reactions to the news show more concern than excitement, as this article from the LibraryJournal.com website shows. You can follow the ongoing discussion on Twitter under the hashtag #AZOD.
So, what about you? How do you feel about the news?
This blog entry composed while listening to The 99 Darkest Pieces Of Classical Music.
Kindle DX on sale
Today’s Amazon Gold Box Deal is the large screen Kindle DX for only $299. It normally retails for $379.
The item raises a couple of interesting questions. Amazon never puts the Kindles on sale, so does this item mean that we are going to be seeing either a new Kindle DX or the much rumored Amazon Android Tablet soon? Kindle aficionados have noted that the DX hasn’t had any updates recently, another possible sign that Amazon is close to rolling out a new product. Most users think that it doesn’t handle fonts and PDFs as well as its Kindle 3G counterpart. The DX is also not available in WiFi – a definite deal breaker for me, even though I would love the larger 9.7 inch display.
Stay tuned for future updates…
New Kindle Notepad App
There’s a new Notepad App available for the Kindle that looks pretty interesting. The ability to take notes on the Kindle has been something that many users have been asking for. This one has many of the most requested features: Speed, searchability, ease of use and the ability to transfer files to a computer. The early reviews on the program are quite promising. And did I mention the fact that it’s only a dollar?
The developers have put some video explaining the use of the program on their blog.
A couple of caveats for new Kindle users: This is active Kindle content which does not work on the first generation Kindle (K1). It should work on the second generation Kindle (K2). As of March 17, the app is not yet available for purchase in Canada.
I just downloaded it myself and will do a review as soon as I have had a chance to work with it.
This blog entry composed while listening to Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach, J.S.: Motets
Where to Find Free eBooks
Surprisingly, there are a lot more sources for legal free books online than one might think. You can find quite a variety, ranging from plain vanilla text versions to books that have been lovingly formatted by ebook aficionados. Most of these are DRM free.
Amazon and Smashwords both offer free books fairly consistently. Most titles that are offered are free only for a short time, so it is best to download them when you find them. Sometimes a book may only be free for as little as a few hours; most titles are free for at least a day or more.
Baen Books Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/ and http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ This is a great site for Sci-Fi fans. Offers both paid and free books.
Public Domain Books:
Project Gutenberg: www.gutenberg.org You can choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.
The Internet Archives: http://archive.org Offers over 2 million items in a variety of books and texts of all kinds.
Manybooks: http://manybooks.net Offers many Project Gutenberg books as well as public domain and creative commons works from many other sources.
Mobilereads Forum: The Patricia Clark Memorial Library: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=137 Public Domain works formatted and archived by Mobilereads members.
Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/ Offers free Public Domain and original books as well as new releases from major publishers. Requires registration.
The Free Library: http://www.thefreelibrary.com/ Over 16 million items, ranging from literary classics to periodicals from many fields.
WikiBooks.org: http://www.wikibooks.org/ Offers open content textbooks that anyone can edit.
For the Kindle specifically:
Mobipocket: http://www.mobipocket.com/freebooks/default.aspx Includes a variety of Public Domain non-fiction and academic works.
Free Kindle Books: http://freekindlebooks.org/ Many of the files offered here are Project Gutenberg files that have been reformatted to look better on the Kindle.
Search Engines:
InkMesh: http://www.inkmesh.com/ Ebook search engine to find and compare prices on books for Kindle, Sony, Kobo, Nook and more.
Just Free Books: http://justfreebooks.info/ Audio and ebook search engine.
The eBook Evangelist 